Springdale Race Course

History

Camden, South Carolina is well known as a training center for racehorses from the Eastern part of the U.S. and throughout the world. With its spacious, well maintained grounds laid out in the European style, Springdale Race Course is home to Hall of Fame trainers and many champion race horses have called this course home, including the incomparable Ruffian. Henry Kirkover and Ernest Woodward were upstate New Yorkers who purchased the old race course in town and renamed it Springdale. Woodward was Chairman of the Board of the Jell-O Corporation and an avid foxhunter with the Genessee Valley Hunt. In the 1940s Woodward gave the more-or-less 600 acres to his good friend and expert marketer Kirkover. The property was sold a few years later to Mrs. Ambrose Clark of Aiken, SC; subsequent to her death the race course was bought by Marion duPont Scott, heiress and wife of famous Hollywood actor Randolph Scott. Mrs. duPont Scott bequethed the race course to the state of South Carolina in 1985.

Specialties

Home of the Carolina Cup and Colonial Cup steeplechase race days, Springdale Training Center, and the National Steeplechase Museum. Saturday, November 23, 2013 - 44th annual Marion duPont Scott Colonial Cup international steeplechase race day and